


Chasing Colors

by Helena_Hathaway



Category: Original Work
Genre: Attempt at Humor, F/F, Heist, Lesbian Character, Theft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 02:54:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13354989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helena_Hathaway/pseuds/Helena_Hathaway
Summary: What kind of juvenile delinquent steals a Monet in a pink ski mask? First of all, it’s child’s play. Everyone knows that the MoMA is a cakewalk, and even if it wasn’t, Monet is so last year. If it wasn’t done by a Ninja Turtle, it honestly isn’t even worth your time.





	Chasing Colors

A banal sound of the five o’clock news is a constant in the apartment. The store-bought voice of a woman fills the room with tedious reruns of stories that struggle to interest their writers, let alone the viewers. Most people who watch the news these days are either waiting for a doctor’s appointment or fighting over the remote in a nursing home.

Saida’s interest is only skin-deep. Her mind needs white noise to enhance her own thoughts. She’s not sure she’s even paying attention. She’s going over her plans, a big night waiting ahead of her. Saida’s planned everything. Nothing has been left out, and she’s made a point to consider all things that could go wrong, not like anything will go wrong. She is, after all, very good at what she does. 

The reservation is at eight. Time is the only worry. Her schedule is rather full, and to be late is the only factor she’s concerned about. Everything else is routine, a normal day of work. She doesn’t go on dates too often, but she thinks she’s prepared enough.

Inside of a rucksack she stows away everything she’ll need. A sharp green dress, the kind made for first impressions, stowed neatly at the bottom of the bag. A ski mask, a basic staple for any professional. Heals, the functional kind, not the ones that make you regret your birth. Gloves, don’t want to leave your finger prints all over a crime scene. Perfume, because there’s nothing worse than smelling like old paint when you’re on a date. A few other assorted things are crammed in there, but she doesn’t want it to be too heavy so as to slow her down.

From the TV, she hears something about a stolen painting which perks her interest, drawing her eyes to the center of the room. A lady with skin as white as her four hundred-dollar teeth whitening treatment smiles through the story of an art thief caught on camera. Rolling her eyes, she scoffs. Amateur.

A blurry security camera still shows the thief. She supposes there’s a good reason for why this headline would be big news. It’s not everyday you see a theft in action, and it’s even rarer that you see it done by someone wearing a bright pink ski mask. The absurdity of it is what makes the story stand out. 

What kind of juvenile delinquent steals a Monet in a pink ski mask? First of all, it’s child’s play. Everyone knows that the MoMA is a cakewalk, and even if it wasn’t, Monet is so last year. If it wasn’t done by a Ninja Turtle, it honestly isn’t even worth your time.

Saida has bigger hopes and dreams than a Monet. On loan from The Met, for a temporary display in a lesser museum trying to find its grounds in high society, resides a Van Gogh of incredible value. All Van Gogh’s are of incredible value, which makes the man himself among Saida’s favorite artists. A Van Gogh will see you cruising on caviar for a few months. Not like she would waste the money on something so idiotic, but the thought is there. 

Checking her watch with the frequency of a cashier waiting for their break, she decides she’d better be headed out. It’s not like her to be double booking her schedule, but this is a blind date, and it was the only time they were both free to actually meet up. And once you make your art heist plans it’s very hard to change them, so you make do with what you’re given. Saida has an insatiable need for instant gratification. Van Gogh is calling out to her, and she is helpless to resist.

Mind getting lost in the mundanity of heist preparation, she dwells on her plans. Time passes monotonously. She’s getting dressed, covered head to toe in all black, and then making her way down to the active street below. From there, her aim is the Subway, and so on. Commuting is a brainless activity, one on which zombies are based. You are one place, then you are another, and the time it takes to get from these locations is foggy at best, and tedious at worst. 

In a matter of a groggy hour, she finds herself standing in front of her destination. The museum itself has very poor security. Hack in through a backdoor in the system and the entire museum’s security shuts down for around thirty seconds. With thirty seconds Saida has enough time to get into the museum, solve a Rubik’s cube, and sit down with a nice smoothie.

It’s an easy job, one she would have worried about near the beginning of her career, but after three years of this life, she’s grown out of the trepidation that burglary insights. As long as you’re quick, and smart, the police have nothing to go on. They’re buffoons, in the purest meaning of the word. 

Saida dawns her black ski mask, and utilizes the darkness of her own skin to camouflage her in the dark expanse of the museum she’s trespassing. Saida isn’t a cat burglar. Nor is she some fancy Julliard graduate, so she doesn’t feel the need to prove herself by doing a pirouette as she climbs in through a window, though TV and cinema would have you believe otherwise. Maybe if she had someone to impress.

All it takes is a quick power surge to drain the security from the building. The blinking red lights of the cameras lining the entrances to the building blink out suddenly. Considering that the rest of the lights in the museum are already shut off due to the late hour, you wouldn’t know that the entire building goes offline unless you were looking directly at the cameras themselves. Saida is an expert, of course, and she spots her handiwork the second it happens. With swift expertise, she pulls open the door to the emergency exit, which will be unlocked for approximately twenty-eight more seconds.

Getting in is as easy as that. Turn the power off, open the door, and then enter. The security camera on the walls are rebooting, which will take anywhere between thirty seconds to two minutes, so she has an amount of time equal to the former to get to the security station, located in an erroneously ill placed spot if the point of the transaction is to prevent burglary. 

The security booth, a large deep red door located only a few footfalls away from the emergency exit door, is locked. Saida had expected this. Unfortunately, there is nothing she can do about that until the power comes back online. Holding the skeleton key card swiped from an unsuspecting security employee who was very much interested in acquainting himself with Saida’s long dark legs, she waits for the power to return. The key card won’t work when the building isn’t online, but it only takes a few moments for a breath to seep into the building, deeply sighing under the satisfying comfort of catching escaped air. At once a tiny red light appears in the card reader, awaiting to test those who seek to pass.

The key card grazes over the reader, and at first there is nothing, until there’s the satisfying click of approval. The doorknob, at first stiff and unresponsive, now melts under Saida’s touch. She’s studied this building enough to know that the cameras rotate at a twenty second delay, giving her more than enough time—fourteen seconds to be exact—to find her way into the safety of the security booth. 

Once inside, there are no security measures, and there’s also no one watching the cameras, because this museum has the shoestring budget of a middle school musical production. The closest they have to a night watchman is the cleaner who comes in every odd numbered day of the month, making the building empty apart from Saida. Someone will come in tomorrow and evaluate the security tapes on fast forward to make sure nobody came knocking, but what they’ll actually see are the looped videos of the building that Saida sets up in her two and a half minutes in the security booth. This process is simple, and it makes her invisible to walk freely throughout the building as a ghost. 

Museum heists are so simple. There’s no anxiety to it anymore, even the high security ones, the ones with motion sensors, or the ones with security guards are so easy. It’s tedious, and barbarically uncomplicated. Sometimes she wishes it were more difficult, like a puzzle to be solved, or a quest to complete. As it is, it’s just like a game of tic tac toe with a five-year-old. You just have to know enough strategy so as not to be walked over, which only takes an infinitesimal amount of brain power to achieve. 

Saida steps out of the security booth, and then walks down the hall, practically skipping along the way. There’s a certain ambiance to a darkened, sleeping building. Knowing you’re all alone in a public place, the sun hidden away, letting only moonlight and streetlamps stream in through seamless glass windows. She has the run of the place, she could steal almost everything within these halls if she had arms big enough, and time enough to achieve it. But she does have plans later on, so speed is key.

She has her sights on only one item, a Van Gogh, which would look absolutely fantastic hanging in her dining room, but she’s unfortunately going to hawk it to pay her bills instead, which is a tedious excuse for theft, but the only one to be found in most situations. Socioeconomically, capitalism is a disaster, and it’s the driving force behind most of the problems faced be middle-class people in the United States. She likes to see herself as a modern-day Robin Hood. She steals from the rich: museums, and gives to the poor: herself. Any other interpretation of the facts is entirely unfounded.

Would it have been easier for her to have taken her master’s degree owning ass into law or politics? Probably. But would she have been able to pay off her college loans in a matter of two years? Absolutely not. Really, it was the logical step forward.

Van Gogh is on the third floor, so she takes a leisurely stroll up the grand staircase that leads from one floor to the other. Museums, even the lesser ones, always make you feel like royalty. The architecture of a museum is some of the finest found in modern day buildings, because everything about them has to be beautiful. The floors, walls, and ceilings need to be fit for a King, because at least a couple of Kings will be hanging on the very walls.

She walks past a Géricault, Millet, Schjerfbeck and other white artists whose names are ridiculous and unpronounceable. She pays them no mind, as they blend together in her eyes after so many years of selling them off to a tone of unglamorous prices. It’s only the big names who will provide the big paychecks. Van Gogh, Picasso, Rothko: these are the names who matter. If Saida ever even saw a Da Vinci she would be able to retire. For this reason, it’s the Van Gogh she’s after, and for good reason too.

Saida stops in front of the painting, sighing. She wouldn’t consider herself a fan of the painting itself. The painting looks amateurish at best. If it were done by a second-year art student at a fine art school, it would be cast aside and chuckled over. The lines depict a baby being held by a malformed individual. It holds no candle to his other works, but it’s the name attached to the piece that matters, not the piece itself. Madame Roulin and Her Baby, the placard reads. The merit of the painting aside, it’s coming home with Saida. 

She stands still, looking at it. A small scuffling sound arises behind her and Saida darts her head around, evaluating the darkness. She expects a mouse, or maybe an owl at the window, but she prepares for the worst. She’s unarmed, but she’s fast, she could outrun a security guard if her safety depends on it. 

What she doesn’t expect is a tall dark figure to erupt from the blackness. The figure is mostly lost in the absence of light, apart from a bright pink thing on their head. There is no one moment where knowledge dawns on her, she is aware the second she calculates that this figure is of a person. The true oddity of the matter is that this is a person who she already knows, who she’s already seen once today.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” the individual in the pink ski mask says. It’s a female’s voice, which would not have been hard to pick up on even without hearing her voice.

Standing, staring at her in stunned silence, Saida has no quippy response. She’d love to have one, but she’s running short, considering this is a situation she never thought she’d find herself in. On the list of things she’d expected to happen during an art heist, running into another thief is not at the top.

“Why are you here?” Saida says. The girl blinks back at her. Presumably it’s a stupid question when both of them are wearing ski masks and standing in a locked museum after hours. Saida’s insulted that anyone would have the gall to come to the same museum as she would, on the same night. She doesn’t have a monopoly on the female art thief game, but she never thought she’d have active competition. 

“Sweetie, I think it’s nice and that you’re going for this female empowerment thing, but can you please get your hands off my Van Gogh, and go find yourself a cute little Correggio and be on your way?”

“Oh, I’m gonna fuck you up.” The words come out instinctually and she prepares herself for an all-out cat fight. Saida would totally mess her up, because this girl has an obvious manicure and she probably took the time to contour her face before putting on the ski mask, because that’s the kind of girl she is. No one just wears a pink ski mask to a heist. She could totally mess this girl up, she’s got several self-defense classes and an older sister who used to sit on her, so her experience, while not professional, is anything but mediocre. 

“You need to calm down, we can be professional about this.” It’s infuriating to Saida’s self-esteem for her to hear this girl’s caramelly rich voice. She’s got an advantage in height over Saida, but height isn’t everything. All it would take is a good blow to her poor stance and she’d be down like a broken seesaw. 

“No honor among thieves.”

The girl makes a huffing sound which Saida decides to match. “Look, I don’t have time for this, I have plans later. I’m taking the Van Gogh.” She pulls the small canister from over her shoulder.

“You’re not special, I’ve got a life too. And I’m going to be taking the Van Gogh, thank you very much.” She makes steps towards the painting, causing Saida’s insides to crawl when she sees the gloved hands reach out, preparing to take the heavy frame from the wall to pull the artwork out. She wishes she had a fancy trick to pull out from her sleeve; pulling out a ninja star and chopping off her wrist or pulling a full-on Indiana Jones and whipping the fingers away. Instead, what she settles on is make an angry noise that she tries to put words behind, but forgets how about midway into the process which culminates in the sound of an agitated bird. 

“You must be a Scorpio.”

Saida lifts a hand to smack her, because she went to high school, she has met this person in many iterations before. If there’s anything this person needs it is to be smacked in the face. She wishes she’d had the courage to do that when it really mattered because honestly to have smacked that bitch Katie Carlson at least once would probably satiate every desire she’s ever had. 

The girl has fast reflexes, holding out an arm to stop her. 

“Well, if we can’t settle this like gentleman.” The girl pushes Saida backward as she pushes her arm away, making her stumble back a few steps. This girl is undoubtedly strong and poised. Her figure is beautiful in every sense, giving Saida reason for her eyes to linger too long.

“What do you propose, Miss Congeniality? Thumb wrestle for it? Rock, paper, scissors over a Van Gogh?” She doesn’t make an attempt to hit her again, deciding it won’t do her any good. She’s bitter though. 

It’s a joke, and anyone with any sense would see it as a joke, because no one is idiotic enough to resort to a thumb wrestle over a near priceless painting. Except this is lost on the other thief, whose ridiculously pink head shrugs in a matter-of-fact way. 

“If we can’t settle this in any other way,” she says.

“You must be joking.”

“If you’re going to be this aggressive about the whole ordeal than I don’t see why we shouldn’t leave it to fate to decide. If fate is rock, paper, scissors, well then who am I to argue?”

“You’re ridiculous. I got here first, and I’m better at it. I deserve it more. I’m the only reason you got into this building without setting off the alarms! Did you even think about that?” 

“Oh, please,” she says, “the door on the roof isn’t even locked, courtesy of yours truly.”

“But you’re going to be all over the goddamn security footage! Or at least you would be if I hadn’t looped the footage.”

“If I didn’t want to be caught on camera, do you think I’d have gone through the trouble of buying a pink ski mask? Do you know how many stores I went into to find this? Six!”

“Woe is you.”

The girl makes an “agh” sound like a teenage girl who’s just been walked into in the hallway and is categorically offended by the very concept of it. She makes a brash move towards the painting, and with a flash of uncontrollable fury, rips the painting off of the wall, in a way so as to pull not only the hook and nail from the wall but possibly the very drywall down with it. 

“Wait!” Saida screams, but it’s too late. A latch on the wall, held in place by the pressure of the painting, releases due to the now absent painting. Her life flashes before her eyes in the utmost root of the cliché. She sees angsty Nirvana fueled teenage rebellion, awkward middle school dances, mosquito bites that she thought were the end of the world, and a piano recital which ended in vomit. 

The alarm blares without a hint of remorse, filling the room with both a bright red light and angry honking sound like a sadistic fire alarm. It’s the kind of sound that makes your stomach drop.

“Oh now, you’ve done it,” Saida says. Rage fills her, along with an unyielding instinct to break this girls nose. She’ll get to that as soon as she gets the hell out of here.

“Me? What do you mean me! This is clearly your fault!” 

“Just shut up, okay!” Saida responds, turning and evaluating her surroundings for no more than a second. The alarm is loud, blaring at them with anger even from a room away. Saida has only the seconds she pauses to remember all her plans, all her backup plans, all her escape routes. She evaluates her watch, noting in the back of her mind that her date is in thirty-four minutes.

The museum is a six-and-a-half-minute drive away from the nearest police station if traffic is little to none. It’s a Friday evening in one of the busiest districts of a busy city. Depending on how intoxicated the pedestrians are and how stubborn the drivers, it should give them at least two minutes extra time, but that’s nothing she can be absolutely sure of. A safe estimate is just about eight minutes. Eight minutes to steal a Van Gogh, get out of this building, and run several blocks away from the incriminating perimeter of the building.

No time to waste.

Saida closes the space between the two of them, ripping the painting from her oppositions hand. She doesn’t bother to pull out the forgery she’s got in the cannister around her shoulder, because the cops are on their way; what’s the good in wasting more time by replacing the painting? With those extra forty seconds she’ll be able to perfect her eyelashes later. 

Sadly, this little theft is not one she’ll include on her highlight reel. When she’s an older lady, sitting in her rocking chair telling her grandkids about her exploits, she won’t be including this one. Instead, she’ll tell them about that time she stole a Degas and as of two or more years later, no one has even realized it’s been stolen yet.

Saida is tearing the frame away from the painting, but in a delicate way because it’s a hundred and fifty-year-old piece of canvas that could feed a family of twelve. She’s rolling the painting up like you would roll up any other masterpiece; hastily and with a siren blaring menacingly around you. 

The other thief makes a sound that translates to “fuck it” and grabs herself a painting from the wall, but she doesn’t care what artist it is she’s stealing. When all hope is lost, you settle with what you can get. It’s like when people settle with their measly $250 on Deal or No Deal after they’ve turned down the offer of $600,000. 

The both of them stow away their rewards, Saida stuffing her painting in the cannister around her back. Then, in the words of their forefathers, and their forefather’s forefathers, the two girls get the hell out of dodge. There’s no conversation wherein the two of them discuss what the other’s method of escape is. Saida watches the other girl running one way without hesitation and decides that she might as well follow, because she’s never been in a situation where she’s had to use one of her escape plans, given that she’s so good at what she does. Now that she has to face that situation, she is questioning her own ability to make an escape plan. The alarm pierces her, taking her out of her right mind. 

Watching the other girl climb out through the window on the top floor, Saida confronts a terror of hers. The window doesn’t quite open onto the roof, and there isn’t any immediate access to it at all. She watches as the other thief climbs out the window then disappears upwards without a trace. Poking her head out and looking up, her stomach groans with anxiety. It’s a few feet to the roof above her, but it’s a four story drop to the street below. Her safety is only a matter of a few feet, five feet at the most, but it’s a climb nevertheless, and climbing is not a joy of hers.

For the first time in a long time she imagines what it would be like if she doesn’t make it out of this. If she’s caught, if she’s sent to jail, her life would be over. Saida comes from a family of diligent overachievers. They think she’s off in the big city representing business moguls. She’d shame her entire family if they found her robbing a museum. She’d ruin everything. That degree she spent seven years to achieve would be worthless if she were in prison or an ex-con.

She doesn’t have enough time for this criticality. Time is running out. She’s as unsafe looking out the window as she is climbing through it. She’s got plans for the evening, and plans for the rest of her life, she can’t just chicken out now.

How shitty would it be to prepare yourself for a date only to find out the girl that you were meeting had been arrested for art theft only half an hour prior? That’s the kind of story that your friends would use as ammunition to make fun of you for the rest of your life. She can’t have that, first impressions are important to her.

“What are you waiting for?” the girl, who Saida had thought disappeared off into the night, looks down, eyes glaring back at hers. Both eyes are a rich shade of brown, but acutely different colors. 

“Death, among other things.”

The other girl groans, but to Saida’s surprise, she offers an ungloved hand down, which is barely enough for her to grab ahold of. The only way to reach it is to climb onto the sill. She questions whether the very real prospect of plummeting to her death is worth it, but the honking sound of the alarm from inside the building tempts her to sigh, pulling off her own glove and reaching for the hand. 

This girl has the agility and grace of a ballerina, so her strength shouldn’t be startling, but it catches her off guard anyway. Saida pushes up from the window, and as she does so, the other thief pulls firmly on her outstretched hand. Using her feet to propel her forward, she manages to give herself enough of a boost to scrabble over before sprawling herself on the stable and thankfully flat roof above her. Saida’s chest is heaving up and down from relief as she thanks her lucky stars to be where she is now, but she hasn’t got long to be relieved once she hears a new siren filling the air around her. It’s the familiar sound she hears a few times a night from her apartment; a police siren, wailing out uninhibitedly. 

“We need to move.” 

She doesn’t question this. Saida launches herself to her feet and starts running along after the other girl. She trusts the judgement of the other, never having needed to utilize a roof to escape more than once or twice. The height isn’t as scary now that she’s not trying to climb it. She’s got stable ground beneath her feet, which is a comfort she won’t take for granted. The two girls make a few dazzling leaps between buildings. It would be parkour if the buildings in New York weren’t achingly attracted to one another—most of them no more than a few feet apart. It’s a romance between the architecture, contrasting styles almost touching but never quite. Alas, theirs is another star-crossed love lost to eternity.

Saida, normally quick on her feet, finds herself crawling at a sloth’s in comparison to the ballerina of a girl. It’s not just her bright pink ski mask which screams for attention, even fleeing from the police is a moment worthy of grace. She glides, like a gazelle, over rooftops, through fire escapes. It’s hypnotic to watch her, and impossible to keep in time with her. 

They’ve passed over about five buildings, dodging big green electricity boxes, and steaming pipes releasing putrid smells into the air high above the city. Saida’s lungs are burning, agonizingly sour. She wasn’t built for long running, she was made to be silent and practical, not ostentatious and agile like her counterpart.

Gazing down at the city below makes Saida feel safe. They’re at least a few blocks away from the scene of the crime, and surely there’s no way that New York City cops will have been able to follow them this far. They’re the reason people associate donuts with policeman. It’s rare that you’ll find a New York City cop with an empty right hand. Either he’ll have a donut, a coffee, or himself in his grasp. It doesn’t make the news though unless they were holding a gun.

There are blue and red lights blinking vibrantly a few blocks away, lighting up the night like Christmas has come mid-July. Sirens wail too along with the bustling of city life. 

The two of them take this time to catch their breath, Saida’s lungs burning, while the other girl seems unperturbed. She envies her, her ability not to feel the same screaming lungs that force a strangled cough from her.

It’s at this point where Saida would see fit to remove her ski mask, dawn casual clothing, and return to the streets like an ordinary, law abiding citizen who doesn’t have a Van Gogh hidden on her back. However, she doesn’t know if she wants to do this, considering the fact that she’s with a literal stranger who’s also a thief. There’s that saying “no honor among thieves” that sounds like it was manufactured in a fortune cookie factory, but is in fact based on a truth that all thieves know not to mess with. There’s no honor among thieves, plain and simple. If you want someone to keep your secret, don’t trust a thief.

Apparently, however, the ballerina did not get this memo, and very candidly takes off her vibrant pink ski mask. She’s silhouetted against the sky, moonlight seeping over the rooftop like a cauldron boiling over. Her hair, like a goddamn movie scene, billows out of her ski mask in slow motion. She shakes her dark brown hair out, like she’s the love interest in a teen movie whose soundtrack consists of Dirty Little Secret and something angsty by Simple Plan. Time seems to stop in the very essence of the phrase, and Saida’s jaw drops. It literally actually drops, preparing for her to catch flies inside of it, if she didn’t have a ski mask covering up the majority of her face.

This girl is about as beautiful as her elegance would insinuate. Despite never having seen her face before, it was a sure truth that this girl is hot as Pompeii, with the bottled brilliance of Barbie playing a ballerina in a Barbie movie that probably already exists somewhere in the world. Her skin is a darker shade than can be produced solely by the sun, and the bones that make up the structure of her face are ones envied by sculptors seeking to create perfection. Her jaw line is both soft and strong, and it melts seamlessly into a beauty dreamt about by the residents of all museums in the world. Her lips are eye-catching, dark lipstick complementing her skin. Saida was right, she does contour her face even when burglarizing a museum. If this was the face you were granted, it seems fit to take care of it.

Feeling sweaty and gross underneath the restrictive woolly feel of the mask, Saida pulls her own off as well. There’s less harm in mutually assured destruction. She wouldn’t say she’s ugly in comparison, but there’s definitely a different in their appeal.

The two of them look upon each other completely for the first time. The other girl displays interest in Saida, evaluating her with intent. It makes her feel uncomfortable, to be judged and picked apart. Under different circumstances it might not be so harrowing, but she’s not in her best way right now, smelly, sweat dripping down her forehead, and no makeup to hide her faults. But the other girl doesn’t seem to see the things Saida does, because the corners of her mouth lift with what she hopes to be attraction.

“I’d love to stick around, but I’ve got places to be.” An award-winning smile is flashed her way and Saida’s heart stutters, not knowing what to do with it. She doesn’t feel worthy of looking upon this girl.

“Catch you later,” the girl says, winking at her before she quite literally steps off the side of the building, which forces Saida’s heart to fly into her throat. She rushes over, peering over the side of the building to see red paint splattered on the sidewalk below, but of course, there’s a fire escape beneath them. She really does have a flourish for the dramatics which is enviable. She can’t help but smile as the stupidly pretty girl disappears into the street below. 

Time gets lost. It’s always getting lost. Saida looks at her watch. She curses at the time. How did she let herself get so distracted?

There isn’t enough time to spare. She doesn’t know for sure where she actually is without seeing the street signs below her, but Saida gingerly steps onto the same fire escape and winds her way down it, metal grating moaning with age and exhaustion below her feet. 

Ten minutes. She has to run to make it. The restaurant is a fifteen-minute walk away. It’s a shorter run, but her getup isn’t exactly date material, and showing up sweating isn’t ideal wither. Jogging as she walks through the street blotted with pedestrians, she reaches over her shoulder for the rucksack around her back. It’s at this point that she realizes something is missing. Her rucksack is exactly where she left it, but what she doesn’t find is the cannister that holds the Van Gogh. Stopping dead in her tracks, Saida pulls the strings from around herself, hoping that maybe she’s just reaching at the wrong angle. But there is nothing. No tube, no painting, nothing. 

“The little…” Saida whispers, searching for the right word but there isn’t one. Whatever she could come up with would surely not be strong enough to get across just how pissed she is in this moment. That stupid ballerina took the Van Gogh! She took the painting that was clearly Saida’s. You can never trust a thief. 

Loathing drips into her veins like poison. Her walk through the city is uninterrupted, because surely the look on her face would deter a stampeding bull. She ducks into a small café, using its bathroom to change her outfit, but she does consider blowing the date off entirely. She’s not in a particularly joyful mood, and she doubts anyone would want to socialize with her right now. 

All that planning, the danger she put herself in. All for naught. She doesn’t even have whatever second rate painting the other thief stole, because she got away with both. Saida’s mind paints itself with scenes of revenge. It’s usually not such a dark place, because she’s an overwhelmingly positive person, but wrong her and things can easily change.

It’s at 8:09 when Saida turns up at the restaurant, a whole nine minutes late for her date which is something she’d be panicking over on any other day. Time is so important to her that to be late is akin to being violent. That goddamn ballerina ruined everything. She set the alarm off, she stole the Van Gogh, and she made her late for her date. She grumbles to herself, forgetting for a moment why she’s here in the first place.

Peering at the faces in the restaurant, her eyes come upon the one person who’s sitting alone. Saida sees long brown hair, dark skin contoured effortlessly, with the whole look being completed by dark lipstick. The girl is wearing a familiar shade of pink which makes her skin pop beautifully. She’s gorgeous; poised, brilliant, beautiful.

Instead of anger, what Saida feels is dumbfounded paralysis. 

The table she sits at grows closer, and Saida realizes that she’s begun walking towards the girl, walking into the clutches of the conniving thief. As she does so, she sees hidden under the table a familiar cannister. Saida stops in front of the table, looking at the girl, who’s looking back at her, face admitting nothing of her emotions. There is a hint of surprise in her eyes, she surely wasn’t expecting this, but her face doesn’t show it as distinctly as it does on Saida. 

“Small world,” the girl says, smiling her big smile, showing off the sixty-dollar lipstick that was worth every penny. “We didn’t have time for introductions earlier. I’m Aruna, can I take it that that makes you Saida? Do join me for dinner, won’t you? I think you and I will have a lot to talk about.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't usually post original work, but I really liked writing this story. I don't expect comments but I welcome them!


End file.
